FOLLOWING BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

In response to blog ‘Assumptions and Brain Development’ and memories of High School, I received this comment from a classmate in Los Angeles:

 

“Of note, BHHS, when we were there was a minority school, in that a substantial majority of the students (not the teachers) were Jewish. Today, that’s a big deal, as the new Nazis in the US have found Jews as a target. At their demonstrations and at Trump rallies you will hear them chanting “Jews will not replace us”!

This is a fraught time in the US, but we’ve been in “reconstruction” since 1865, and it looks like Trump did a good job in pulling on the threads of racism so as to begin to split our country asunder. It’s the Republican Party which now stands for the racists, anarchists and insurrectionists, most of whom are armed. There are 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents in the US of A. Gun limiting laws from California and other Democratic Party strongholds are heading up the appellate ladder to the US Supreme Court, which, at present, is in no mood to permit gun carry restrictions. So, this will certainly become a more dangerous part of the world for minorities of all stripes.”

 

From what I read on news reports from various networks in the United States, the Trump band wagon maintains its momentum. He and his followers do not let up, despite what one would think where setbacks e.g. the slump in share price of his latest ‘business venture’ and the failure of his attempt to exert ‘executive privilege’ over the papers requested by the January 6 Committee of the House of Representatives.

 

Stephen Collinson, reporter for CNN, in an article titled Extremists seize back control of the Republican Party’s message machine (CNN-10 November 2021) concludes:

The state of the GOP in Washington is in many ways a national tragedy. It deprives conservatives of a voice untainted by violence and demagoguery. But more importantly, governance itself is weakened when one of the country's two great parties is consumed by extremist dogma and rage. And ultimately, it threatens the very existence of American democracy, which is under siege on multiple fronts from a radicalized party that has lost control of itself.

 

Which brings me back to ‘Optimal brain development’. Although Kevin McCarthy obtained a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration degrees they were from an effectively unranked State University. As to Lindsey Graham, he obtained a BA and JD from the University of South Carolina, which is ranked somewhere around 300 odd. Not to denigrate the institutions they attended, but for intelligence, integrity and consistency of thought, these examples of their graduates do not hold up very well.

 

Another vociferous Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Georgia.  Greene has promoted far-right, white supremacist and antisemitic conspiracy theories including the white genocide conspiracy theory, QAnon and Pizzagate as well as other disproven conspiracy theories such as false flag mass shootings, the Clinton body count and those related to 9/11. Before running for Congress, she advocated for executing prominent Democratic politicians. As a Congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis and compared Covid-19 safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. She subsequently apologized for the latter comparison. One wonders just what Business Administration studies were like at the University of Georgia between 1992 and 1996 if these are the opinions their graduates hold. 

 

The Republican Party rely on less than optimal brain development. During an interview, at a party conference, Ari Fleischer – white house press secretary under George Bush commented on what the Republican Party must do with or without Trump:

 “Keep revving up the rural areas and the lower edu..(hesitation)..lower income, non college educated areas, and just be reasonable in the suburbs, don’t scare people and the suburbs will come home”

 

The interview is included in this clip on YouTube:

 

 

The line-up and rhetoric of prospective candidates for Presidential Office from the Republican Party is a terrifying prospect. There is a real and very present risk that the United States will become an even more divided and bigoted nation, with the most self-seeking arrogant and corrupt leadership on the planet. A con that will put even Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko in the shade. I hesitate putting Boris Johnson in that company as he is more jester and fool than con man, which is being revealed to the general public more and more as time goes by. He appeals to that very same group of citizens in the rural areas of the United Kingdom.

 

So far as the United States, and perhaps the rest of the world, is concerned, the only real hope is that the Biden legislative recovery package has some real and effective success in the coming months. If the program makes a very positive impact amongst the lower educated, lower income, non college educated rural people of the United States, and does not scare them, then they will come home to the Democratic Party. There is a very orchestrated attempt on the part of a number of right wing Republican congressmen and senators to scare that rural public into believing what they are being offered is dreaded communism and socialism. It is a mantra being repeated ad nauseum, a return to the McCarthyism of the 1950’s through a McCarthy of the present.  

 

Will optimum brain development ever be achieved in the face of this onslaught from disgruntled, regressive and venal politicians so manifestly unfit for their office. They are so far from representing the welfare of the public they claim to serve, it beggars belief. Yet there they are, and somehow they keep getting elected. As one born during the Second World War I can only ask,  where have all the flowers gone?